Guffaws and awkward laughter: game devs react to Indie Game: The Movie

At a special Game Developers Conference showing, Indie Game: The Movie faced …

The Game Developers Conference audience seemed to sympathize with the existential angst expressed by subjects like Team Meat's Edmund McMillen in Indie Game: The Movie

Image courtesy of Indie Game: The Movie

Before the showing started, the screening room was a bustle of activity, with attendees shaking hands and hugging colleagues they might not have seen since the last Game Developers Conference. Looking around, it was easy to spot developers handing around laptops, mobile phones, and tablets to show off the latest build of some pet project, or simply burying their heads in their own computers and using the preshow time to tweak some code. Sitting in the audience, you could overhear snippets of conversations on everything from implementing Web sockets in online games to the frustrations of finding every last Figment in Psychonauts.

This was perhaps the perfect audience to gauge whether Indie Game: The Movie accurately captures the life of an indie developer—a crowd of hundreds of people that all see themselves as the stars of their own, personal game development movie.

Relatable moments and awkward laughter

Right from the start, you could tell the audience could relate deeply to the stories being told on screen. When Super Meat Boy co-creator Edmund McMillen said he used game development to connect with people that he "probably won’t like" in face-to-face encounters, the laughter was a bit too knowing. When partner Tommy Refenes said working at a place like EA or Epic "sounds like hell to me," and dissed big-budget games like Call of Duty and Halo Reach, the applause from the audience came with real force behind it.

But there were moments when the parallels between the subjects on screen and the viewers in the audience seemed to get a little too intense, as well. When Fez developer Phil Fish flipped the bird at entitled fans who have been asking after a firm release date for his oft-delayed project for nearly four years now, the crowd burst into raucous approval. But as Fish continued to talk about the "army of assholes" he’s found online and how their words have "made life harder to enjoy," that approval quickly died down into silent, sober commiseration.

There were a lot of moments during the movie’s emotional roller-coaster ride where the audience didn’t seem to know quite how to react. When Fish threatens to commit suicide if he can’t finish his game—"that is my incentive to finish it, to not kill myself"—there was a smattering of awkward laughter followed by an even more awkward silence in the crowd. When Fish finally debuts his game at PAX East, only to be faced with multiple game-crashing bugs, grins of recognition in the crowd around me quickly turned into head shakes of disbelief. I spotted a lot of viewers leaning forward in their chairs, gritting their teeth or gnawing unconsciously on their fingers as they watched some of the tenser moments.

At other points, the audience seemed to almost be waiting for permission to react to the emotional display on screen. When McMillen recounted the time Refenes told him that "as long as I could finish this game I’d be OK with dying because at least the game would be finished," there was a notable beat of silence in the crowd. Then McMillen added a knowing coda of "It was fucking weird," letting the audience burst into peals of laughter.

And after all of the trials shown through most of the movie, the laughter when McMillen revealed that Super Meat Boy had, in two days, made him "more money than he earned in the past six years combined," seemed almost cathartic for an audience likely made up of similarly starving artists.

Post-movie reactions

When filmmakers Lisanne Pajot and James Swirsky came out with the film's subjects for a post-show panel discussion, the extended standing ovation they received showed just how much the film's exquisitely personal stories had connected with the audience. Questioners that came up to the microphone talked of being "deeply inspired" by the movie and said the panelists had become the kind of motivational, larger-than-life figures that they themselves had mentioned as inspirational in the film. One viewer thanked the filmmakers for showing that "a game is not just a game, it’s a product of a person’s lifestyle, it’s what the whole person is."

One questioner summed up what the entire audience seemed to be thinking. "Thank you all so much for making this and to all the game developers, not just for making the games that you have, which have all inspired me, but for baring your souls in this movie," he said. "It has just been so inspirational to me personally to see you at those emotional lows and seeing you pull through that—that’s a huge inspiration and I think that’s a really important reason this film was made."

I take it there is only one copy of this film, being hand delivered by cycle courier. One day it might be handed to a sailor who down on his luck in Portsmouth trades it for some broth and then maybe...just maybe a few more people get a chance to see this film.

As a "starving artist" who's about to release his first game.. I'm so nervous, excited, scared.. and I am excited to know that there are many others like me.

Especially since on a daily basis I find myself questioning myself about the move to quit my job to do this.

There is nothing like releasing your very first game, regardless of how it does you'll be so incredibly proud My friend and I are working on our third game together, this one's about 9 months out still, but it's still so, so exciting to be doing what we love and we really don't see -not- doing this in the future. We haven't quit our day jobs just yet but after this one we might consider cutting back a little.

As a "starving artist" who's about to release his first game.. I'm so nervous, excited, scared.. and I am excited to know that there are many others like me.

Not to hijack, but what sort of game is it? Do you have a website with more info?

cobaltplasma wrote:

There is nothing like releasing your very first game, regardless of how it does you'll be so incredibly proud My friend and I are working on our third game together, this one's about 9 months out still, but it's still so, so exciting to be doing what we love and we really don't see -not- doing this in the future. We haven't quit our day jobs just yet but after this one we might consider cutting back a little.

Best of luck to you, man, always keep inspiration close to the heart

Aww, I love the ars community. Thanks you guys.

It's actually "technically" my 2nd game, but my first was a bejeweled clone that I'm not the most proud of, and was not a work of passion, but one of learning. Obviously, it didn't make much either (it's free in the app stores)

The next one, I think I'll be done within the next couple of weeks... but it's a "defense" type game.. I think that's the genre. It goes back a long way to some early flash games, but it's a side perspective where the enemies come from one side of the screen and you have to take them out before they reach your base on the other side.

Unfortunately I don't have a site set up yet for it, I'm working on that now, but man, tough to build websites, while making the game, while trying to network, while trying to set up an actual company... especially when you're a one man team =/ Hilarious that my fiance is actually the artist. Talk about keeping costs low =)

It got shown at Sundance and won an award for, like best-edited documentary or something. It's on its obligatory victory tour. What's cool about that is that the authors are present for every single screening, and people come from miles and miles around to be there. The downside is that no one else gets to see it yet.

I caught a showing in SF earlier tonight and enjoyed it overall, even though I'm not a game developer. I thought they did a good job at showing the people who do make these games, and bringing into relief the amount of sweat, blood, and tears that can go into it.

It got shown at Sundance and won an award for, like best-edited documentary or something. It's on its obligatory victory tour. What's cool about that is that the authors are present for every single screening, and people come from miles and miles around to be there. The downside is that no one else gets to see it yet.

Hopefully they'll keep the indie spirit alive after its "tour of victory" is over and have a worldwide launch (worldwide as in not region-locked).Otherwise it might just end up fullfilling the old saying ... WAIT, I just read the HBO deal article.HBO deal means region-locking 99.9%.Well that says that about selling out and hypocrisy.

Oh yes... I forgot to congratulate the makers ... well, congratulations, I guess...

"HBO and Oscar award-winning producer Scott Rudin have optioned the premise of Indie Game: The Movie to become a fictional TV series. There are a lot of things that need to line up for it to happen, but it's so exciting because Scott Rudin has made lots of films that we love, like The Social Network, Moneyball, There Will Be Blood, and lots of Wes Anderson films."

It got shown at Sundance and won an award for, like best-edited documentary or something. It's on its obligatory victory tour. What's cool about that is that the authors are present for every single screening, and people come from miles and miles around to be there. The downside is that no one else gets to see it yet.

Hopefully they'll keep the indie spirit alive after its "tour of victory" is over and have a worldwide launch (worldwide as in not region-locked).Otherwise it might just end up fullfilling the old saying ... WAIT, I just read the HBO deal article.HBO deal means region-locking 99.9%.Well that says that about selling out and hypocrisy.

Oh yes... I forgot to congratulate the makers ... well, congratulations, I guess...

HBO is doing the distribution? I thought HBO just signed to do a show based on a similar premise?

Based on what I saw in one of the Q&As with the creators online, I'm guessing part of the delay in distribution is that it is a bigger movie than they planned. They weren't originally thinking it would win a Sundance award and be quite as popular as it is, so that adds an extra level to the whole distribution process.

Hmmm from my understanding, I could easily be wrong though, it seems that HBO has the option and distribution rights to develop IGTM as a show series and not the only means to distribution of the film after their victory tour of various festivals.

Kyle Orland / Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in Pittsburgh, PA.